


Giftic 1

by Dreadmartha



Category: Intermission - Fandom, Mobsterswitch - Fandom, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: M/M, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreadmartha/pseuds/Dreadmartha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little Mobsterswitch? In Innovator’s point of view? Maybe a few musings on the beginning of a relationship with Detective?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giftic 1

Deadeye Detective is a machine. Of that you are sure.

There’s no other explanation for him.

And it’s the most beautiful explanation you, with all your imaginative powers, could think of.

Being on the right side of the law can’t be the reason Deadeye is so good at being perfect, because his lackeys are tremendously imperfect, though they are also what most people would call ‘good guys.’

There are a few outliers, little things like where the good (no, great) detective comes from, his family’s whole story, a more detailed account of his upbringing than just ‘strict parents,’ an idea of what he was like as a younger man.

But, of course, you’ve taken these missing details into account and have, naturally, accounted for them. Your theory hinges on the plain and simple fact that you, being so mentally well endowed, cannot possibly imagine Deadeye as a child. And if you can’t imagine it, you can’t be asked to think that it actually happened.

So he must be a machine, else he would have to have been born at the approximate age of forty-six. And that’s just silly.

This knowledge has reshaped your understanding of the detective. You would even go so far as to say it has enhanced your understanding of him. Things settle more perfectly into place when you consider the fact that under his skin (which you’re willing to bet is some kind of polymer or synthetic something) is a mass of whirling gears and sparking plugs.

It’s a thrill, quite honestly, to know he’s mechanical. Beyond the several things it explains about him, it also means that out there (somewhere you hope isn’t very far from Metropolis Center) is a man even better with machines than you.

And that’s an idea that’s at once wonderful and terrifying. If you can find this man, you’d love to strike up some manner of communication. Then, depending on how good he is compared to you, you might have to kill him.

You haven’t decided yet.

You suspect you’ll have to, given that whatever is keeping Deadeye operating is superior to anything you’ve dreamed up. And you really don’t like competition.

But you do wonder why Deadeye would leave his maker. Nothing you’ve made can claim sentience like his. At most your gizmos can boil water and serve tea by themselves, but the detective thinks. You’ve seen it in his face, circuitry making the synthetic skin wrinkle around his eyes, causing that tiny tick in the left corner of his mouth. Given something to process, he works through it with, of course, mechanical efficiency, but also all the hallmarks of human concentration. Which means he’s programmed to seem human.

And he does, to everyone not as smart as you.

Funny thing is he seems to think he is human himself. That’s likely why he left; his maker was a reminder of his inhumanity.

Pride would certainly be considered a human trait, particularly when it makes him do something as foolish as leaving the one person who would be best at repairing him.

Because, as much as you (and he) would like to deny it, Deadeye is showing a few signs of… Well, on him it looks like age. You’re not quite sure what the term would be. Not rust, or damage. He hasn’t short circuited, or been running slow. No viruses, as far as you can tell.

But he does look older, which you know is a sign of something going wrong in his software. Or hardware, which is much more likely.

He needs a tune up, at the very least.

And, assuming he left his maker on the bad terms you imagine he must have, he can’t go home to get fixed up. Now, because he’s Deadeye, you know he must have some grasp of his own workings, and can fix mild damage. But if, god forbid, something happened to his processor or he was damaged too badly to auto-repair, or even needed (you don’t even want to think about this) to reboot, he would be all alone and broken and scared and lost and

And

And

And that’s bad.

This is why you’re going to tell him you know what he is. Just so he can know that there’s someone who can help, if things ever get (as Scofflaw says) ‘hairy.’

You’ve practiced your speech in the mirror about twenty-seven and a half times. And that’s not counting the thirty-two times you rehearsed individual words and phrases. There are things you’ve elected to leave out of your speech, like your full reasoning for wanting to help. There are, in fact, several reasons, but the one you’ve chosen to articulate is a reference to the cat-and-mouse game the Scoundrels and the Company have been playing all these years. The stalwart borne of your mutual competence has meant much less robbing and killing and shame for yourself at least. Prior to the Company’s arrival as your rivals, you were on the ‘fast-track’ (another Scofflawism) ‘to the booby-hatch.’

Saying your own sanity is on the line will, you’re sure, make him draw on that installed well of compassion he hides so perfectly whenever your two gangs meet and exchange bullets. Or, quite frankly, whenever you’ve seen him.

There are other reasons, of course, that are much less significant[1].

You’re not sure what to bring on this attempt at communication, much the way you’re not sure what to ever bring to any attempt at communication. Nothing threatening, which means nothing all that useful.

Largely, you think all you need to bring is yourself.

But, just in case he agrees to let you take a look at what’s going on under that synthetic skin, you bring a scalpel. From your medical days.

You imagine he’ll appreciate your presence of mind.

Rather than go to his office and risk outing him in front of the rest of the Company, you wait until he should be home and go to his apartment building. You wouldn’t want him to have to face the ridicule that would come with being found out within earshot of his comrades. And, quite frankly, you don’t really mean for this to be a Company and Scoundrels thing.

You’d much prefer that it be a Detective and Innovator thing.

It may seem selfish, but you can’t help wanting to be Deadeye’s favorite. You want to be everyone’s favorite, but the great (not just good) detective is a favorite of yours and you wish the feeling was mutual.

If it was, then maybe you could almost be friends. Scofflaw says you three Scoundrels are ‘amigos’ but you’ve never liked them all that much. That means you’ve never had a friend before.

His apartment is uptown, in a firmly middleclass neighborhood. It’s strange for you to feel safe walking the streets. You still don’t, even up here, but other people seem to feel very secure, and it rubs off a little on you.

For once, you don’t keep checking behind you to see if you’re being tailed.

People keep away from you, probably because you look like a tramp. And you’re fairly sure you are one, anyway. The fact that you manage to scrape rent together on your tiny couple of rooms isn’t enough of a reason to not count yourself among the city’s rich culture of hobos.

And that fact does nothing to help you get into his apartment building. The super, who’s keeping watch at the front of the building, give you a dirty look and you don’t even try to enter through there. Instead you pick the lock to the back door and climb the winding back staircase up to the fourth floor.

That’s a strange quirk of Deadeye’s, a minor obsession with fourths. Fourth floor, four member of the Company, four guns you’ve seen him use regularly[2], four pipes (each for a different mood), a signature that looks to contain only four characters. It’s an odd little detail that his maker must have installed on the off chance that he got lost and needed to be identified by something so tiny and personal. If you were making such an advanced machine, you know that you would put something like that in to help single him out of a line up.

By the time you come to that conclusion, you’re standing at his door.

Your guts flop around emptily, you feel the cold seep through the layers of clothing separating you and the rest of the world.

Remember your speech, keep it simple. Breathe.

You knock on the door and the sound echoes around you.

Oh god.

What are you doing?

The door opens before you can run. You don’t even hear the gaggle and slide of a deadbolt being undone.

And there he is, looking at you as if you two had made plans for you to be here. His eyes live up to their nickname, but his eyebrows and the thin lines in the skin of his brow betray the fact that he’s not happy to see you.

But then, he’s never happy to see you.

Your hands fidget dumbly inside your pockets, causing something to slip up and out. It rolls across the floor and your eyes drop to find you scalpel cruising across the carpet. Half your brain fires off and you bend to retrieve it. Deadeye’s shoe beats you to it, pressing the little knife inside the floor a second before you would have grabbed it.

“Stand up, Innovator.”

You do, twisting the tip of your left index finger between your right index and thumb. It hurts, but that distracts you from the glare he gives you as he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and leans down to pick up the scalpel.

He slides it, now wrapped in the handkerchief, into his pocket.

Then he kicks your legs from under you and steps on your chest. The carpet doesn’t save the back of your head from smarting as it connects with the floor.

The pain does, however, remind you of why you’re there. You grab a hold of his ankle as he leans some of his weight onto your sternum. Your attempt at lifting his foot and the pressure it brings does nothing but remind you that you’re nowhere near as smart as you think you are.

“I just w-want to h-h-help, Detective!” You’re hissing, despite the fact that you practiced speaking in a calm voice at least twenty-seven and a half times.

He presses harder for a moment, causing your teeth to grind.

“Help with what?” His heel digs into the top of your weak diaphragm.

“F-fi-fffixing you,” you squeeze your eyes shut because all you can see is the ceiling light, anyway. Everything is green on the other side of your eyelids. Panic boils in your stomach as you realize that, if Deadeye has his way, the outside of your eyelids will be full of green soon too.

Your lungs seize up and you struggle to fill them.

“Pleassse, I-I just wanted to hhhelp, I swear that’s ah-all,” The pressure on your chest increases, a shadow falling over your face.

Then the pressure’s gone.

You crack an eye open.

Deadeye is standing over you, a foot on either side of your ribcage. He rubs the hard line of his jaw, his mouth ticking as he touches what you can only just see is a tiny, bright red line on the side of his chin.

Where he cut himself shaving.

“I don’t need fixing, Innovator,” his hand drops away from his face, (likely in reaction to the sudden pale you’ve felt affect your own face,) “understood?”

You nod, hoping he won’t kick you again.

“Good.” He steps over you, back towards his door. “Make it harder for me to catch you, next time.”

“What?”

“Normal business hours are better for both of us, I’m sure.” He’s back at the door, closing it. “Goodnight, Innovator.”

It snaps closed before you managed the ‘g’ in ‘goodnight.’

Deadeye Detective may not be a machine. You’re not sure anymore.

——

[1] Your tiny little fantasy of getting to know him personally, not just as the machine who occasionally scrapes the butt of his gun on your cheekbones.

[2] Thompson sub-machinegun (his trademark), a revolver with an ivory handle, a derringer he keeps in his front breast pocket, some manner of sniper rifle you’ve only ever heard stories about.


End file.
